Shocking Cookbook Expose DANGER THRILLS BREAST IMPLANTS

                             We need to have a talk about those Fundraiser                                                               Cookbooks, people.

         You think you are getting authenticity, but                                      it's all a LIE.

               I am talking specifically about fundraiser cookbooks. Not fake titties. This is what's called a visual metaphor.

Companies that help folks publish fundraising cookbooks have been around for a very long time. Take this outfit for example. What the company does is glam up your cookbook. They provide you with a selection of features like pretty covers, household hints, weights and measures, equivalent ingredients, index, glossary, artwork, things like that. You send in all the recipes you've collected, they print them, and it all looks nice.

Thing is, those bitches in the Garden Club don't always step up to the plate and offer their own recipes because they're all talk, those broads, just talk talk talk and then nothing but excuses, and you have to put out a cookbook; and do they care? No they do not. But the publishers understand. So...

                      The publishers also provide recipes, 'standard favorites,' to pad out the content.  

And all of this is fine, except the standard content is, well, standard.  And this is what I'm trying to get across to you - 

Most of the fundraising cookbooks you run across can be 90 or even 100% standard content. 

The companies even add fake contributors' names!  

Do these programs let you in on that?  No they do not.  You are lead down the primrose path by the  Ladies Fundraising Committee of Pacific Luthran Church thinking that Mrs. Peterson of Omaha Nebraska actually contributed her prize 'Olive Tuna Ring' recipe to the Ladies Fundraising Committee of Pacific Luthran Church, when actually there is no Mrs. Peterson and that Olive Tuna Ring recipe was dreamed up by someone at a desk in Missouri who hated humanity and disliked dogs.

When I go thrifting I often see women with tall stacks of these church/fraternal organization/ etc. cookbooks, heading to the checkout, exclaiming in delight about how charming it all is, and I don't disabuse them because why take away someone's happy? But if they took the time to flip through that stack they'd soon realize that they're buying exactly the same content over and over and over again. Particularly if the books are all from the same small town,  because (and I congratulate  myself on this discovery) different agencies will tend to use one publisher whose name gets passed around on the grapevine. Like, some poor volunteer in Milton-Freewater ass of nowhere Oregon gets stuck on the Cub Scouts 'Cookbook Committee' and doesn't have a goddamn clue, so s/he calls the Milton-Freewater Fire Station or the Library or the Hospital and asks the poor person stuck on their Cookbook Committee what publisher they use, and...there you go.  Five organizations in Milton Freewater ass of nowhere Oregon put out fundraiser cookbooks that year, and all five have the same goddamn content, and most of it was written by that asshole at his desk in Missouri.

When I am out trawling for cookbooks, I'll take a stack to the Furniture department, pick out one of the cleaner armchairs, settle in and flip through those sapsuckers before I buy. Damn straight I will.  Go ahead and stare me down, nervous young thrift store employee. I know you're worried that I'll fall asleep or die or set up camp here and have to be escorted out at closing. I know you're expecting me to piss up this cushion. Suffer. I did not come here to throw my money away.

 I've flipped through literally thousands of fundraiser cookbooks over the years. You get to recognizing the signs.  I mean the publishers imprimatur is usually right there in the title page, or on the back cover, so there's a giveaway (duh, it took me ages to figure this one out, which is sad.) Sometimes there are no title pages - but after time, you learn to recognize the stock recipe lineups and get a feel for the writing style, the type and appearance of the feature pages. And a lot of times - bring your reading glasses for that fine print - you'll find that the publishing company is taking money to promote different grocery distributors, so it'll be nothing but recipes with 'Sunshine brand Margarine' or 'Hormel Brand canned brain of something'. 

No, cookbook aficionados, what you want are the fundraisers that some earnest volunteer cranked out on a mimeograph, or on one of the first Xeroxes, and another volunteer collated off a table and stapled together on one of those stand thingies.  If it has title pages or any other features, those will have been drawn by someone's kid.* Maybe it was decorated by some sincere soul with a calligraphy pen, no skill, and benevolent motives. Maybe it's made of hand-laid paper, or grocery bag stock, and hippies have been involved somehow. Maybe it was put out by a cult, a commune, or a maniac food philosopher (like Jethro Kloss), or some isolated, obscure rural organization. And maybe, if you are very very lucky, it was put out before 1950. THERE YOU GO. That's your treasure. That's the really good stuff. 

You want content that was volunteered by real people. That is where you find the gems. That is where you get the most readable, fun content. That is where you find the best food atrocities, and where you find the really good recipes too, the things that people in that time and place really ate and enjoyed and have passed down.  

So there you go. Now go grab your garage sale money and hit the streets, eager young space cadets! Answer the call of the food of our ancestors, some of whom were crazy as shithouse rats! Go forth and refuse to let this stuff die!